The 2nd COST XLIC Working Group 3 Meeting – Control of Chemical Reactivity will be held at Queen’s University Belfast, on 4th – 5th April 2016.

Scope of the meeting:The topic of interest of the XLIC Working Group 3 (WG3) is to control the reactivity of highly excited and/or ionized molecules through pump-probe techniques and High Harmonic spectroscopy, i.e., to control electron transfer, isomerization and dissociation with attosecond temporal and sub-Angstrom spatial resolution.Specific areas addressed by the WG are:
* Development and application of optimal control theory (OCT)
* Use of time-resolved pump-probe techniques to control process relevant to atmospheric chemistry or biomolecules
* Development and use of current theories to treat the dynamics of pump-probe experiments
* Study of the response of molecular systems irradiated by strong fields

Meeting Details:The 2nd WG3 meeting will be hosted by Queen’s University Belfast over two full days (4th-5th April 2016) with contributions from invited speakers and young scientists, including a poster session.

The meeting will be held in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Queen’s University Belfast. The University is about 15 minutes walk from the City Centre and there are a number hotels in the area. While there are direct flights from European cities to Belfast International Airport (Paris, Vienna, Prague, Pisa, Geneva, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Krakow, Nice, Split), Dublin is accessible from many more cities and there is a regular bus connection to Belfast (2 hours).

Delegates should arrive on Sun 3rd April and leave on Wed 6th April. To register, and for more information, including accommodation, see the conference webpage – http://go.qub.ac.uk/XLIC-WG3.

Registration and poster abstract deadline: 1 March 2016Early career researchers are particularly encouraged to attend the meeting and present their latest results.

Conference programme:
Click the link to download a copy of the program.

Support to participants:Invited speakers (and some selected participants) who had received an invitation to be reimbursed, can claim their travel and subsistence expenses in accordance to COST rules.
Participants are advised to check COST Vademecum (pages 20-24) before incurring on any expense and to take into account that the flat rate for accomodation has been reduced to 100 EUR.In particular, please:– check the supporting documents you should provide in case you are travelling to and from countries other than that where the approved meeting is being held and the country where you are residing. A proper justification and all the documents detailed in page 22 of COST Vademecum should be provided when sending the claim. If not, the claim will be rejected.– take note on the current definition on Local transport expenses on page 24 of COST Vademecum: now, you should provide tickets/invoices for any trip occurring within the same country if the claim exceeds 25 EUR.

The CECAM workshop Seeking synergy between dynamics and statistics for non-equilibrium quantum processes will be held in Paris in June 6th-9th.

One of the major difficulties in achieving an accurate theoretical descriptions of non-equilibrium processes in quantum mechanical systems is framed by the desire to provide a representation of the system of interest that is as realistic as possible, in a manner that is computationally tractable. The coupling of electronic and nuclear motion involving excited states, the quantum nature of the nuclear degrees of freedom, and the application of time-dependent driving forces, are just few examples of the effects that must be addressed in order to simulate these processes. Each of these effects poses unique challenges to theoretical progress. A number of exact and approximate quantum dynamics techniques are being developed and refined in order to provide algorithms that respond to the demand for a balance between computational efficiency and physical accuracy. Currently available techniques are typically based upon two different, but equivalent, formulations of many-body quantum mechanics, the wave function approach or the density matrix picture.

The proposed workshop aims to bring together the two principal molecular quantum dynamics communities (wave-function methods and density matrix approaches). The scope is threefold, (i) to identify and explore common goals and obstacles, (ii) help in fostering new ideas to connect these approaches, and bridge the apparent gap between approximate dynamical and statistical descriptions, (iii) identify possible routes to extend dynamics approaches to the domain of statistics.

At the workshop, experts are asked to uncover the fundamental details of the methods in pedagogical lectures. These lectures will be followed by extensive discussions, during which contributed speakers and participants are welcome to put forth some of their doubts and problems in the relation between dynamics and statistics.

The next Joint Iberian Meeting on Atomic and Molecular Physics IBER 2017 will take place in Barcelona, Spain from September 12 to 14, 2017.

IBER is the biannual conference organised jointly by the Atomic and Molecular Physics Specialised Group (GEFAM) of the Spanish Royal Society of Physics and the Portuguese Society of Physics.

The main purpose of this series of IBER conferences is to bring together scientists of Iberian community dedicated to Atomic and Molecular Physics and related areas of to facilitate the interaction and exchange of knowledge between their research groups. Researchers and scientists from all over Europe and the world are invited to attend this conference and share knowledge. The conference will be structured in three days with plenary lectures, invited lectures, oral presentations and a poster session.

Registration is now open. The deadline for early-bird registration is July 6th while abstract submission will be open until June 9th. Please mark your calendars.
Approximately 10-12 contributions will be selected for oral communications. The participation of young researchers and students is particularly welcome.